Texts, Facts and Femininity: Exploring the Relations of Ruling
... El presente estudio utiliza etnografía institucional como método de indagación, el cual fue desarrollado por la sociología canadiense Dorothy Smith (1987Smith ( , 1990aSmith ( , 1990bSmith ( , 1999Smith ( , 2005Smith ( , 2006. Este método de indagación busca visibilizar cómo la vida cotidiana de cada persona está organizada, tanto dentro como fuera de instituciones por una serie de relaciones de regulación social más allá de la cotidianidad (Parada, 2011;Smith, 1987Smith, , 1990aSmith, , 2006. ...
... El presente estudio utiliza etnografía institucional como método de indagación, el cual fue desarrollado por la sociología canadiense Dorothy Smith (1987Smith ( , 1990aSmith ( , 1990bSmith ( , 1999Smith ( , 2005Smith ( , 2006. Este método de indagación busca visibilizar cómo la vida cotidiana de cada persona está organizada, tanto dentro como fuera de instituciones por una serie de relaciones de regulación social más allá de la cotidianidad (Parada, 2011;Smith, 1987Smith, , 1990aSmith, , 2006. Pero la indagación comienza y se mantiene con actores reales tales como abogados, trabajadores sociales, psicólogos, entre otros que interactúan a través de prácticas cotidianas concretas en su quehacer institucional más allá de las interpretaciones de los discursos institucionales. ...
... Pero la indagación comienza y se mantiene con actores reales tales como abogados, trabajadores sociales, psicólogos, entre otros que interactúan a través de prácticas cotidianas concretas en su quehacer institucional más allá de las interpretaciones de los discursos institucionales. En este sentido, los actores no son el foco de atención, sino las prácticas institucionales que se llevan a cabo diariamente (Smith, 1987(Smith, , 1990a(Smith, , 1990b. Estas prácticas pueden no representar lo consignado en marcos legislativos; es 8 decir, los trabajadores dentro del sistema pueden reinterpretar su rol institucional de manera alternativa a lo establecido en el marco legal, actuando conforme a su propia interpretación de los protocolos (Parada, 2011). ...
(analítico)Se exploran las prácticas institucionales que facilitan u obstaculizan la protección de los derechos de niños, niñas y adolescentes en el sistema de protección de la niñez en El Salvador. Partiendo de un diseño de etnografía institucional, se realizaron 61 entrevistas a trabajadores pertenecientes al sistema de protección. Como resultado, se identificó la ausencia de manuales que establezcan prácticas concretas en la aplicación de la Ley de Protección Integral de la Niñez yAdolescencia, obstruyendo su óptimo funcionamiento. A través del uso de la teoría del interaccionismo simbólico se explora cómo la interpretación discrecional o no entendimiento de la ley forma instituciones aisladas del sistema; también se analiza el grado en que las dinámicas socioeconómicas del país ponen en desventaja a los sectores rurales para acceder a estos servicios. Palabras clave: Sistema de protección; niñez y adolescencia; interaccionismo simbólico; El Salvador; ley Lepina; coordinaciones de sistemas, protocolos de prácticas, derechos humanos, prácticas institucionales.
... One way in which this happens in modern Western and globalized contexts is through the 'requirement' that women engage with consumer culture, buying the products and services 'necessary' to achieve particular locally/globally sanctioned 'looks.' Dorothy Smith's (1993; see also Wolf, 1991) still very relevant analysis of women's insertion into modern consumer capitalism via 'discourses of femininity' excavates the largely hidden knowledges, skills, work, and expense entailed in emulating feminine appearance 'ideals.' Power is thus theorized here as the power of capital as well as the power of discourse to persuade women of the importance of physical beauty, the flawed nature of their/our own appearance, and the necessity of buying cosmetic products and services and engaging in the unpaid labor that will 'correct' those 'flaws.' ...
... The reproduction of unmarked Whiteness in body image scholarship obscures how racist, as well as sexist, ideologies shape this 'thin ideal' and render invisible the experiences of girls and women of color in terms of 'body image' and more broadly in terms of the racist as well as sexist violences that target their bodies (see Bordo, 2009;Crenshaw, 1991). And while some studies acknowledge the Whiteness of beauty norms beyond thinness (Levine & Murnen, 2015), such as pale skin, blue eyes, or 'smooth shiny' hair (Bordo, 1993(Bordo, , 2004Griffiths & Haughton, 2021;Smith, 1993), such analyses rarely inform experimental body image research or indeed non-experimental work in this field. ...
In this chapter, we analyze the implicit and explicit ways that power figures in feminist research and theory on bodyweight and appearance. In the process, we consider how power is made visible or becomes occluded in propositions about what we know. In order to do this, we begin first with an exploration of theorizations of power in feminism. We then discuss the significances of bodies and appearance per se in constructions and regulations of femininity and of feminist analyses of the specific appearance norms that have predominated in twentieth and twenty-first-century Western and Westernized contexts. Finally, we turn our attention to feminist work on eating disorders and end with some reflections on what we see as future directions for feminist research in this field.
... Connections were traced through a wide variety of approaches, through exploration of the "online landscape" (Hine, 2007). In reconstructing the effects of implementing a language policy, a timeline approach was taken (Smith, 1990a). This involved comparing competing narratives about the introduction of the code of conduct and triangulating with other sources to compile an objective temporal ordering. ...
... Unfolding the history of what transpired around these events reveals conflicts in the institutional sequencing of the timeline. Comparing between all these different retellings of the history of events, I reconstructed a timeline of my own to find an objective sequence of key events (Smith, 1990a). ...
Understanding how and why online professional knowledge sharing communities develop issues with gender inclusion is essential to building safe and respectful environments. Trans and nonbinary gender identities are under constant threat and scrutiny, and trans people frequently face harms in online environments. Through digital ethnography, I explore how an international online programming community, Stack Exchange, responded to the challenges of implementing trans and nonbinary inclusive language policies. I discuss the rhetorical strategies and silencing tactics deployed by the community in response to policy changes. The analysis draws on Dotson’s concept of testimonial smothering to argue that epistemic violence prevents dialogue about the importance of respecting preferred pronouns. The paper concludes with reflections on the implementation of pronoun policies in international communities.
... My analytic notes cover commonalities in resignation notices and piece together a timeline of relevant events. This is informed by the process outlined in Texts, Facts and Femininity (D. E. Smith, 1990). I choose this as an approach both because different contested timelines appear in the data corpus as a way that people are understanding the events, and because I sense that attending to the ordering of events will be productive in untangling how the narrative is being socially organized. ...
Stack Exchange is a global knowledge sharing platform centred around programming, computer science, and a variety of other topics. It is a ubiquitous resource for coders and programmers. Knowledge sharing platforms, like Stack Exchange, are increasingly part of informal professional learning, and make professional knowledge accessible to people across the world. However, the platform has several persistent issues, like the under-participation of women and gender minorities. Given the ubiquity of the platform, and its positioning in recognising the expertise of programmers, there is an urgent need to understand how and why gendered participation patterns are reproduced in this environment. Female participation in computer science and engineering has long been a subject of academic research. This thesis extends this line of research to cover female, non-binary, and trans experiences of participating in the online production of programming and coding knowledge. The title of the thesis, Unicorns in Moderation, has multiple meanings: it refers to the ‘unicorn’ success of a technology platform; the unique way in which of Stack Exchange’s approach to moderation combines platform affordances, volunteer moderation, elected moderation, and automation; and the relatively low participation of female and non-binary members. Using a hybrid approach to digital ethnography, drawing on a mixture of interview, observation, document analysis and data analysis, I explore the gendered issues that are produced and reproduced on Stack Exchange. I find that the language policies on Stack Exchange are central to the reproduction of gendered discrimination and find that this is exacerbated by the gamified approach to content moderation. I also find that it is difficult for users to have measured discussions about gender-based discrimination on the platform due to the lack of recognition for embodied knowledge. From this, there is great potential to understand how online professional learning and knowledge sharing environments might avoid reproducing gender-based discrimination. Future research could extend this by observing how communities on emerging user-coordinated platforms, such as Slack and Discord, manage professional knowledge creation and documentation practices and how these practices are institutionally coordinated. The thesis has three main contributions. The first a theoretical contribution, by applying contemporary social epistemologies, such as epistemic ignorance, to digital contexts. The second is in the methodological design, which brings together a mixture of digital and conventional methods under the banner of institutional ethnography. The third is an empirical contribution, shedding new light on the discourses of gender on platforms. This compilation thesis comprises an extended history of Stack Overflow, three empirical papers, and one methodological paper. Paper 1, Writing the Social Web, argues for how digital platforms can be understood as institutional settings. Paper 2, Gaming Expertise Metrics, explores how the platform mechanics on Stack Overflow reinforce existing masculine hierarchies in programming. Paper 3, No Room for Kindness, examines the codification of communication on Stack Overflow, using interviews, policy texts, and social media data to explore the relations that prevent politeness on the platform. Paper 4, Silencing Tactics, discusses how queer issues are discussed in the Stack Exchange community, and how these issues are minimised through the mechanisms of epistemic ignorance
https://hdl.handle.net/2077/79513
Parts of work
Osborne, T. (2023). Writing the Social Web: Toward an Institutional Ethnography for the Internet. In P. C. Luken & S. Vaughan (Eds.), Critical Commentary on Institutional Ethnography: IE Scholars Speak to Its Promise (pp. 231–246). Springer International Publishing. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-33402-3_12
Osborne, T., Nivala, M., Seredko, A., & Hillman, T. (2023). Gaming Expertise Metrics: A Sociological Examination of Online Knowledge Creation Platforms. The American Sociologist. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12108-023-09607-x
Tanya Osborne (2024), No Room for Kindness: Gender and Communication Conventions on Stack Overflow. [Unpublished manuscript]
Osborne, T. (2023). Silencing Tactics: Pronoun Controversies in a Community Questions and Answers Site. Journal of Digital Social Research, 5(1), https://doi.org/10.33621/jdsr.v5i1.122
... All this works to both fend off not enjoying intimate and sexual activities being seen as a dispositional trait (Edwards, 2005) and also to minimise her partner's accountability for the sexual issues. As is consistent with previous work by Smith (1990), these contrast structures in extracts 2, 3a, 3b, and 5 create a tension between two extremes and are used to present the sexual issues as deviating from the situation before cancer: having a very busy (extract 3b) or fantastic sex life (this extract) together with their partner. ...
Cancer and its treatments cause significant changes in sexuality that affect the quality of life of both patients and their partners. As these issues are not always discussed with healthcare professionals, cancer patients turn to online health communities to find answers to questions or for emotional support pertaining to sexual issues. By using a discursive psychological perspective, we explore the social actions that participants in online health forums perform when discussing sexuality. Data were collected by entering search terms in the search bars of three online health forums. Our analysis of 213 threads, containing 1,275 posts, provides insight into how participants who present themselves as women with cancer account for their sexual issues and, in doing so, orient to two intertwined norms: Having untroubled sex is part of a couple’s relationship, and male partners are entitled to having untroubled sex. We discuss the potential harmful consequences of orienting to norms related to sexual behaviour. Yet, our findings can also help healthcare professionals in broaching the topic of sexuality in conversations with cancer patients. The insights of this study into what female patients themselves treat as relevant can assist health professionals in better aligning with patients’ interactional concerns.
... Mithilfe der Institutionellen Ethnographie (IE) (z. B. Smith, 1990Smith, , 2005Smith, , 2006, einer Sozialtheorie und qualitativen Methodologie, untersuchte ich in beiden Ländern, wie beide Personen in der Assistenzbeziehung ihre Beziehung zueinander erlebten und wie das relationale Erleben von Assistenzbeziehungen durch die Art und Weise, wie Assistenz mit Hilfe eines PBs organisiert wird, beeinflusst wurde. Traditionell werden in Institutionellen Ethnographien drei sozialwissenschaftliche Forschungsmethoden eingesetzt. ...
Zusammenfassung
Der Beitrag stellt dar, wie und woran die Rechtswissenschaft arbeitet (1.) und welche grundlegenden Beiträge sie für die Teilhabeforschung leisten kann (2.). Im sozialen Rechtsstaat der Bundesrepublik Deutschland sind Sozialleistungen zur Teilhabe rechtlich eingebunden und bestimmt. Die Wirkungen des rechtlichen Rahmens auf die Teilhabe von Menschen mit Behinderungen müssen bei vielen wissenschaftlichen Fragestellungen mitbedacht werden. Hierfür ist es wichtig zu wissen, welche Beiträge die Rechtswissenschaft zu einer solchen Betrachtung leisten kann.
... Mithilfe der Institutionellen Ethnographie (IE) (z. B. Smith, 1990Smith, , 2005Smith, , 2006, einer Sozialtheorie und qualitativen Methodologie, untersuchte ich in beiden Ländern, wie beide Personen in der Assistenzbeziehung ihre Beziehung zueinander erlebten und wie das relationale Erleben von Assistenzbeziehungen durch die Art und Weise, wie Assistenz mit Hilfe eines PBs organisiert wird, beeinflusst wurde. Traditionell werden in Institutionellen Ethnographien drei sozialwissenschaftliche Forschungsmethoden eingesetzt. ...
Zusammenfassung
Mit einer problemorientierten Annäherung an Unterschiede und Zusammenhänge zwischen den Begriffen Teilhabe und Partizipation mit Blick auf Exklusion und Inklusion im Kontext von Behinderung verfolgt der Beitrag das Ziel, das Terrain der Teilhabeforschung zu skizzieren. Teilhabe und Partizipation werden als subjektorientierte und relationale Begriffe sowie als grundlegende Menschenrechte (Rudolf, 2017, S. 13) verstanden. Exklusion und Inklusion werden als prozesshafte Strukturen, die Fragen gesellschaftlicher Zugehörigkeit bestimmen, betrachtet. Bieten diese Schlüsselbegriffe Orientierung für die Teilhabeforschung?
... Mithilfe der Institutionellen Ethnographie (IE) (z. B. Smith, 1990Smith, , 2005Smith, , 2006, einer Sozialtheorie und qualitativen Methodologie, untersuchte ich in beiden Ländern, wie beide Personen in der Assistenzbeziehung ihre Beziehung zueinander erlebten und wie das relationale Erleben von Assistenzbeziehungen durch die Art und Weise, wie Assistenz mit Hilfe eines PBs organisiert wird, beeinflusst wurde. Traditionell werden in Institutionellen Ethnographien drei sozialwissenschaftliche Forschungsmethoden eingesetzt. ...
Zusammenfassung
Wird Inklusion als gesellschaftlicher Transformationsprozess gesehen (u. a. Ziemen, 2013, 2018), muss auch in den Universitäten ein Veränderungsprozess stattfinden, der es Menschen mit Lernschwierigkeiten ermöglicht, verschiedene Rollen einzunehmen. Inter-/National existieren bereits Projekte zur Inklusion von Menschen mit Lernschwierigkeiten als Forschende und Studierende (Hauser & Schuppener, 2015; Wagner, 2019); partizipative Forschung wird in Deutschland seit 2011 vermehrt diskutiert (u. a. Buchner et al., 2011; Burtscher, 2019; Keeley et al., 2019). An mehreren Standorten werden zudem Menschen mit Lernschwierigkeiten als Bildungsfachkräfte zu Lehrenden ausgebildet (Mau, 2019). Dennoch sind weiterhin Fragen offen, wie der Personenkreis in einem exkludierenden Hochschulsystem einen chancengerechten Zugang zu Studium, Lehre und Forschung erhält. Hieran anschließend wurde an der Universität zu Köln mit „SUSHI – Summer School inklusiv“ im Herbst 2019 ein einwöchiges Lernformat für Menschen mit Lernschwierigkeiten und Studierende angeboten. Aus der Zusammenarbeit entwickelte sich die inklusive Forschendengruppe Hochschulbildung (InFoH), die gemeinsam Möglichkeiten eines chancengerechten Zugangs zur Hochschulbildung untersucht. Auf der Grundlage der Theorien zum sozialen Raum von Löw (2017) und Bourdieu (1983; 1993) wird dabei diskutiert, welche Auswirkungen diese Prozesse auf alle Beteiligten haben.
... Mithilfe der Institutionellen Ethnographie (IE) (z. B. Smith, 1990Smith, , 2005Smith, , 2006, einer Sozialtheorie und qualitativen Methodologie, untersuchte ich in beiden Ländern, wie beide Personen in der Assistenzbeziehung ihre Beziehung zueinander erlebten und wie das relationale Erleben von Assistenzbeziehungen durch die Art und Weise, wie Assistenz mit Hilfe eines PBs organisiert wird, beeinflusst wurde. Traditionell werden in Institutionellen Ethnographien drei sozialwissenschaftliche Forschungsmethoden eingesetzt. ...
Zusammenfassung
Im Sinne einer Enthinderungshilfe müssen subjektive Vorstellungen der Adressat*innen für die Soziale Arbeit Ausgangspunkt für helfendes Handeln sein. Menschen, die als geistig behindert kategorisiert sind und lange den Hilfesystemen zugehörig sind oder waren, berichten als Expert*innen der Sache. Ein figurationssensibles Verständnis ermöglicht den Blick auf subtile Machtbalancen und verdeutlicht den Bedarf an unterstützten Aushandlungsprozessen.
... Mithilfe der Institutionellen Ethnographie (IE) (z. B. Smith, 1990Smith, , 2005Smith, , 2006, einer Sozialtheorie und qualitativen Methodologie, untersuchte ich in beiden Ländern, wie beide Personen in der Assistenzbeziehung ihre Beziehung zueinander erlebten und wie das relationale Erleben von Assistenzbeziehungen durch die Art und Weise, wie Assistenz mit Hilfe eines PBs organisiert wird, beeinflusst wurde. Traditionell werden in Institutionellen Ethnographien drei sozialwissenschaftliche Forschungsmethoden eingesetzt. ...
Zusammenfassung
In diesem Beitrag werden zunächst Kerngedanken der Intersektionalitätsforschung zusammenfassend dargestellt und bisher nicht hinreichend geklärte Fragen benannt. In weiteren Schritten wird das Potenzial der Intersektionalitätsforschung als machtkritisches Instrument der Analyse von sozialen Ungleichheitslagen für den Kontext Behinderung sowie die Inklusions- und Teilhabeforschung skizziert und eine Reihe noch ungelöster Probleme herausgestellt.
... Mithilfe der Institutionellen Ethnographie (IE) (z. B. Smith, 1990Smith, , 2005Smith, , 2006, einer Sozialtheorie und qualitativen Methodologie, untersuchte ich in beiden Ländern, wie beide Personen in der Assistenzbeziehung ihre Beziehung zueinander erlebten und wie das relationale Erleben von Assistenzbeziehungen durch die Art und Weise, wie Assistenz mit Hilfe eines PBs organisiert wird, beeinflusst wurde. Traditionell werden in Institutionellen Ethnographien drei sozialwissenschaftliche Forschungsmethoden eingesetzt. ...
Zusammenfassung
Die berufliche Teilhabe ist gerade für Frauen mit Störungen aus dem schizophrenen Formenkreis häufig mit Barrieren verbunden. Um eine Teilhabe am Arbeitsleben zu fördern, kommen Leistungen zur Teilhabe am Arbeitsleben eine zentrale Bedeutung zu. Der folgende Beitrag zeigt auf, welche Kontextfaktoren für Frauen mit Störungen aus dem schizophrenen Formenkreis in der Rehabilitation zur Förderung von Teilhabe an Arbeit und Beschäftigung für die Teilhabe am Arbeitsleben von zentraler Bedeutung sind.
... Mithilfe der Institutionellen Ethnographie (IE) (z. B. Smith, 1990Smith, , 2005Smith, , 2006, einer Sozialtheorie und qualitativen Methodologie, untersuchte ich in beiden Ländern, wie beide Personen in der Assistenzbeziehung ihre Beziehung zueinander erlebten und wie das relationale Erleben von Assistenzbeziehungen durch die Art und Weise, wie Assistenz mit Hilfe eines PBs organisiert wird, beeinflusst wurde. Traditionell werden in Institutionellen Ethnographien drei sozialwissenschaftliche Forschungsmethoden eingesetzt. ...
Zusammenfassung
Partizipative Forschung rückt das Konzept der Teilhabe in und durch Forschung ins Zentrum. Ziel ist es, die gesellschaftliche Teilhabe benachteiligter Gruppen zu stärken – und zwar durch deren Beteiligung an Forschungsprozessen. Drei Komponenten zeichnen den Ansatz aus: a) die doppelte Zielsetzung, Wirklichkeit zu verstehen und zu verändern, b) die Beteiligung von Co-Forschenden mit Entscheidungsmacht und c) Befähigungs-, Reflexions- und Ermächtigungsprozesse. Ausgewählte Herausforderungen, wie ungleiche Voraussetzungen für Partizipation, werden besprochen.
... Mithilfe der Institutionellen Ethnographie (IE) (z. B. Smith, 1990Smith, , 2005Smith, , 2006, einer Sozialtheorie und qualitativen Methodologie, untersuchte ich in beiden Ländern, wie beide Personen in der Assistenzbeziehung ihre Beziehung zueinander erlebten und wie das relationale Erleben von Assistenzbeziehungen durch die Art und Weise, wie Assistenz mit Hilfe eines PBs organisiert wird, beeinflusst wurde. Traditionell werden in Institutionellen Ethnographien drei sozialwissenschaftliche Forschungsmethoden eingesetzt. ...
Zusammenfassung
Der Beitrag befasst sich mit methodischen und methodologischen Überlegungen zur Forschung mit Menschen mit Komplexer Behinderung. Unter Bezugnahme auf das Forschungsprojekt Teilsein & Teilhaben wird insbesondere der Frage nachgegangen, wie teilhabeorientierte Forschung mit Menschen mit Komplexer Behinderung gestaltet werden kann. Die zentrale Erkenntnis lautet, dass sich der Ausschluss des Personenkreises aus der Teilhabeforschung nur verhindern lässt, wenn Teilhabe im und am Forschungsgeschehen von allen Beteiligten in achtsamer Weise gestaltet wird. Der Beitrag schließt mit den sich daraus ergebenden methodologischen Konsequenzen.
... Mithilfe der Institutionellen Ethnographie (IE) (z. B. Smith, 1990Smith, , 2005Smith, , 2006, einer Sozialtheorie und qualitativen Methodologie, untersuchte ich in beiden Ländern, wie beide Personen in der Assistenzbeziehung ihre Beziehung zueinander erlebten und wie das relationale Erleben von Assistenzbeziehungen durch die Art und Weise, wie Assistenz mit Hilfe eines PBs organisiert wird, beeinflusst wurde. Traditionell werden in Institutionellen Ethnographien drei sozialwissenschaftliche Forschungsmethoden eingesetzt. ...
Zusammenfassung
Die Fallstudie gibt Einblick in anwendungsorientierte Teilhabeforschung. Thematisiert wird Unterstützte Kommunikation als zentraler methodischer Zugang für Befragungen von jungen Erwachsenen mit komplexen Kommunikationsbeeinträchtigungen. Untersucht wurden Förderfaktoren und Barrieren für Kommunikation und Teilhabe an Bildungsprozessen im Übergang Schule – Beruf.
... Mithilfe der Institutionellen Ethnographie (IE) (z. B. Smith, 1990Smith, , 2005Smith, , 2006, einer Sozialtheorie und qualitativen Methodologie, untersuchte ich in beiden Ländern, wie beide Personen in der Assistenzbeziehung ihre Beziehung zueinander erlebten und wie das relationale Erleben von Assistenzbeziehungen durch die Art und Weise, wie Assistenz mit Hilfe eines PBs organisiert wird, beeinflusst wurde. Traditionell werden in Institutionellen Ethnographien drei sozialwissenschaftliche Forschungsmethoden eingesetzt. ...
Zusammenfassung
Die in diesem Beitrag vorgestellte empirische Studie untersucht mit einem sequentiellen Mixed Methods-Design Bedingungen der Gewährleistung von Teilhabe von Bewohner*innen stationärer Altenpflegeeinrichtungen. Insbesondere widmet sich der Beitrag zum einen den methodischen Verfahren, die geeignet sind, die Praxis von Teilhabeförderung multiperspektivisch zu erkunden sowie kognitiv eingeschränkte Menschen einzubeziehen. Zum anderen beleuchtet er den Transfer der Ergebnisse in ein Musterrahmenkonzept, welches Einrichtungen zur Umsetzung von Teilhabeförderung dienen soll.
... Mithilfe der Institutionellen Ethnographie (IE) (z. B. Smith, 1990Smith, , 2005Smith, , 2006, einer Sozialtheorie und qualitativen Methodologie, untersuchte ich in beiden Ländern, wie beide Personen in der Assistenzbeziehung ihre Beziehung zueinander erlebten und wie das relationale Erleben von Assistenzbeziehungen durch die Art und Weise, wie Assistenz mit Hilfe eines PBs organisiert wird, beeinflusst wurde. Traditionell werden in Institutionellen Ethnographien drei sozialwissenschaftliche Forschungsmethoden eingesetzt. ...
Zusammenfassung
Die Begleitforschung des Projekts „Kommune Inklusiv“ untersucht anhand eines mehrperspektivischen Methodendesigns, inwiefern sich Sozialräume verändern, in denen Maßnahmen durchgeführt werden, die die Teilhabemöglichkeiten von Menschen erweitern sollen, die von Ausschluss bedroht oder betroffen sind. Die Ergebnisse zeigen, dass die handlungspraktische inklusive Sozialraumentwicklung unbedingt einer theoretischen Fundierung sowie empirischen Überprüfung bedarf, um Inklusion als kritische Praxis betreiben zu können.
... Mithilfe der Institutionellen Ethnographie (IE) (z. B. Smith, 1990Smith, , 2005Smith, , 2006, einer Sozialtheorie und qualitativen Methodologie, untersuchte ich in beiden Ländern, wie beide Personen in der Assistenzbeziehung ihre Beziehung zueinander erlebten und wie das relationale Erleben von Assistenzbeziehungen durch die Art und Weise, wie Assistenz mit Hilfe eines PBs organisiert wird, beeinflusst wurde. Traditionell werden in Institutionellen Ethnographien drei sozialwissenschaftliche Forschungsmethoden eingesetzt. ...
Zusammenfassung
Die Teilhabeforschung ist Begegnungsort für verschiedene Disziplinen. Dieser Beitrag greift das Zusammenspiel der Rechtswissenschaft mit der Sozialen Arbeit auf. Er zeigt deren Zugänge und erarbeitet exemplarisch, wie sich Teilhabeforschung in einer interdisziplinären Zusammenarbeit methodisch ausgestalten kann. Eine spezielle Thematik, § 5 Abs. 3 WMVO, wird sowohl aus rechtlicher als auch sozialwissenschaftlicher Perspektive betrachtet. Mit der Zusammenarbeit ergibt sich ein transdisziplinärer Erkenntniszuwachs.
... Mithilfe der Institutionellen Ethnographie (IE) (z. B. Smith, 1990Smith, , 2005Smith, , 2006, einer Sozialtheorie und qualitativen Methodologie, untersuchte ich in beiden Ländern, wie beide Personen in der Assistenzbeziehung ihre Beziehung zueinander erlebten und wie das relationale Erleben von Assistenzbeziehungen durch die Art und Weise, wie Assistenz mit Hilfe eines PBs organisiert wird, beeinflusst wurde. Traditionell werden in Institutionellen Ethnographien drei sozialwissenschaftliche Forschungsmethoden eingesetzt. ...
Zusammenfassung
Dieser Beitrag begreift sich als Versuch, mithilfe philosophischer und sozialwissenschaftlicher Überlegungen die normativen Anforderungen im Kontext von Behinderung zu skizzieren, die sich aus einer kritischen Reflexion des Zusammenhangs von Teilhabe und sozialer Gerechtigkeit ergeben. Hintergrund ist, dass Theorien der Gerechtigkeit Schwierigkeiten haben, Menschen mit kognitiven und schweren Beeinträchtigungen zu inkludieren. Ziel des Beitrages ist ein Plädoyer für eine Berücksichtigung menschlicher Verletzlichkeit, die auch einen kritischen Blick auf Teilhabeanforderungen erlaubt.
... Mithilfe der Institutionellen Ethnographie (IE) (z. B. Smith, 1990Smith, , 2005Smith, , 2006, einer Sozialtheorie und qualitativen Methodologie, untersuchte ich in beiden Ländern, wie beide Personen in der Assistenzbeziehung ihre Beziehung zueinander erlebten und wie das relationale Erleben von Assistenzbeziehungen durch die Art und Weise, wie Assistenz mit Hilfe eines PBs organisiert wird, beeinflusst wurde. Traditionell werden in Institutionellen Ethnographien drei sozialwissenschaftliche Forschungsmethoden eingesetzt. ...
Zusammenfassung
Der Teilhabe-Begriff lenkt durch seinen Subjekt- und Kontextbezug den Blick auf konkrete sozialräumliche, mikro- und mesostrukturelle Bedingungen der Lebensführung, ohne den Einfluss makrostruktureller Aspekte zu vernachlässigen. Ausgehend vom Gehalt und den normativen Implikationen des Teilhabegriffs leiten sich dementsprechend Mehrebenen-Untersuchungsmodelle als ein zentrales Merkmal der Teilhabeforschung ab. Unter Bezug auf das Lebenslagenkonzept werden Aspekte der konzeptionellen Klärung und Begründung solcher Modelle diskutiert.
Of the 2.2 million adults incarcerated in the United States, between 600,000 and 700,000 return to society annually. The U.S. federal evaluations reveal over a quarter of these individuals are rearrested within 6 months, while studies in more than 40 states find that close to half are reincarcerated within 3 years. Recidivism rates reveal a pressing need to understand reentry from the perspective of those who have experienced it. This study analyzes interviews with previously incarcerated individuals, identifying four key categories of experiential knowledge: impact of clinical staff, re-entry programming staff, mentors, and founder’s experiences. Experiential knowledge, and understandings acquired through direct personal experience, emerge as pivotal in supporting successful reintegration. The discussion highlights its impact beyond reentry, aligning with individuals’ aspirations to help others. By emphasizing the significance of experiential knowledge, conclusions advocate for its integration into re-entry programs to enhance support and services for justice-involved individuals.
Since the passage of the Homeland Security Act in 2002, the Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has used police and carceral power to entrench its operations against criminalized immigrant communities in New York City. This article argues that to understand this process, homeland security actions must be seen as a form of symbolic and physical violence that ascertains legitimacy through an internal dialogue within the very bureaucracies of the state itself, and are sanctified by broader historic structural relations, as per Bourdieu’s understanding of the state manifesting in bureaucratic and discursive ways. Through an examination of 148 federal documents, this article will conduct an institutional ethnography-informed intertextual analysis of how ICE has expanded into New York City, arguing that through the courting of broader moral panics concerning race, national security, and crime, a Homeland Security State has converted migration management into security management, reifying a binary between the “good” and “bad” immigrant.
This chapter explores the financial, personal, and relational costs of marriage migration to the United States from a queer point of view. The analysis draws from in-depth interviews, online community forums, and content created by LGBTQ+ people and/or same-sex couples who have petitioned for status based on a fiancé or spousal relationship. The chapter specifically asks: How do the normative and normalizing systems of marriage and immigration impact the individual and the couple? To construct a ‘bona fide’ marriage in the eyes of the State, couples must meet an economic threshold and perform marital and family roles in ways that are intelligible to immigration officials, often sanitizing their relationships and identities in the process. Naturalization scripts are also sanitized and romanticized in the image of a colonial fantasy—US citizenship as an object of pure and even lifelong desire, rather than a complicated step and one compelled by the State. The focus here is on the affective experience of such normalization and the ambivalence people feel toward both the marriage and immigration systems in which their security is entangled.
This article outlines an innovative method involving an Instagram private chat group with participants from around the world. We illustrate how qualitative methods and arts-based methods in an asynchronous online environment can be useful across disciplines. We analyze the experience of running a two-month-long discussion about reading bestselling fiction with an international group of 16 Gen Z readers to foreground key potentialities of the method. We argue that the flexibility, co-production, and transnational critique aspects in the research process allow researchers to employ a feminist research methodology leading to rich experiences for both the participants and the researcher(s).
The initial outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic hit Wuhan, China, in early January 2020, and restrictive lockdown measures were implemented. Risks of transmission and the lockdown measures severely disrupted everyday life and affected the well-being of local residents. Applying institutional ethnography and autoethnography, this study focuses on the virtual mutual care of Chinese social network site users, which attended to the hardship of local people through activities in cyberspace. Not only were the virtual mutual care activities lifesaving, as they tackled critical challenges of the affected residents, but they also had radical meanings, as they strived for solidarity and justice in the context of crisis.
This introductory article to the special issue ‘Classical Sociology from the Metropolis’ provides a comprehensive exploration of the profound influence of metropolises, particularly Berlin, on the development and discourse of classical sociology. Emphasizing the metropolis as a social space and promoter of sociological thought, it delves into the lives and works of key figures such as Georg Simmel, Robert E. Park, W.E.B. Du Bois, Frieda Wunderlich and Rose Laub Coser. Their interactions, perspectives and transnational exchanges, particularly between Berlin and other urban centres such as Chicago and New York, are highlighted, illustrating the global interconnectedness of sociological discourse. While acknowledging established sociological icons, the article also highlights the often overlooked contributions of women and scholars of colour, challenging and expanding the traditional understanding of the ‘classical’ in sociological thought. The narrative travels from the early urban sociological and feminist theories that emerged in the metropolis of the 1920s to the complexities of Marxist sociology in a divided Berlin after the Second World War. Through a curated selection of articles in the special issue, the work underlines the central role of the metropolis in shaping foundational sociological concepts and the thinkers who championed them.
In 1992, Barbara Laslett and Barrie Thorne organized a symposium in Sociological Theory with the aim of tearing down a “wall of silence” between feminist theory and the mainstream of sociological theorizing. For help, the editors turned to the work of Dorothy E. Smith, the renowned theoretician and methodologist. Smith’s theorizing today carries even greater appeal, having expanded from a sociology for women to a sociology for people. This wider scope never sacrifices her project’s theoretical versatility and nimbleness and disdain for abstraction. In offering a critical tribute to Smith, who passed away in June 2022 at the age of 95, the present symposium invited three scholars—Paige Sweet, Rebecca Lund, and Marjorie DeVault—to share new reflections on the legacy of Smith’s powerful mode of inquiry.
Background:
Hemodialysis is the most commonly used renal replacement therapy for end-stage renal disease. The collaborative efforts of multidisciplinary teams comprising nephrologists, nurses, pharmacists, and dietitians play a crucial role in enhancing patient outcomes, improving the quality of care, and reducing treatment costs. However, various factors such as healthcare cost reduction, limited resources, profit-driven systems, organizational structure, and involvement in patient care decisions impact the provision of hemodialysis care by the multidisciplinary teams.
Objective:
This study aimed to explore the institutional practices of multidisciplinary teams within a hemodialysis unit.
Methods:
This institutional ethnography study was conducted between April 2019 to February 2020 in a hemodialysis unit of a public university hospital in Kathmandu, Nepal. Data were collected through face-to-face interviews with ten nurses (including supervisors and incharge), two nephrologists, two dietitians, two pharmacists, and two technicians. Additionally, 167 hours of observation, two focus groups with nurses, analysis of institutional texts, and field notes were conducted. Participants were purposively selected based on their ability to provide diverse information regarding institutional practices in hemodialysis care. Interviews were recorded and transcribed.
Results:
The analyzed data were presented in: 1) the context of hemodialysis care, 2) textual practices: the ruling relations of hemodialysis care (staffing, protocol, job description), 3) hemodialysis decision, and 4) institutional support.
Conclusion:
Hemodialysis care provided by multidisciplinary teams is constrained by limited resources, particularly in terms of physical space, dialysis machines, nurses, doctors, and dietitians. The hospital's cost-cutting policies lead to reduced investment in patient care equipment, particularly dialysis machines, which significantly impact the workload of nurses and technicians. Insufficient nurse staffing necessitates the provision of other renal care responsibilities, resulting in increased workload, reduced time available for hemodialysis care, and unfinished tasks. The absence of clear job descriptions for hemodialysis care places an additional burden on nurses, who are often required to fulfill the responsibilities of other healthcare teams. Doctors hold the authority in making care decisions, which are subsequently followed by other team members.
Institutional ethnography (IE) is an approach to sociological inquiry associated with the work of the internationally recognized Canadian social theorist Dorothy E. Smith. Studies in institutional ethnography involve developing a problematic that explores how individuals' experiences in the everyday world are shaped by wider social relations. Local experience serves as the point of departure for studying relations of power within institutional complexes. IE's innovations are concerned with developing an ethnographic approach to studying phenomena of ruling that are more conventionally considered to be the province of macrosociologies. A key facet of this approach is the study of the role of texts in coordinating social relations.
Content analysis is a method of observation and analysis that examines cultural artifacts. One of the most common and frequently cited definitions describes this type of research method as “any technique for making inferences by systematically and objectively identifying specified characteristics of messages” (Holsti 1969: 26). This method emerged in the early twentieth century when researchers began studying the texts of speeches, political tracts, and newspapers. It quickly evolved into investigating the wide array of texts in society, including photographs, movies, diaries and journals, music, television, film, letters, law cases, manifestos, and advertisements. Primarily, anything that is in or can be converted to printed form can be examined using content analysis. This method has a long history in sociology as well as many other disciplines, including political science, history, law, and policy studies, as well as feminist studies.
Feminist standpoint theory is a broad categorization that includes somewhat diverse theories ranging from Hartsock's feminist historical materialist perspective, to Haraway's analysis of situated knowledges, Collins' black feminist thought, Sandoval's explication of third world feminists' differential oppositional consciousness, and Smith's everyday world sociology for women. Knowledge generated from embodied standpoints of subordinates is powerful in that it can help transform traditional categories of analyses that originate from dominant groups. However, as many feminist standpoint theorists argue, it remains only a partial perspective. Given standpoint theory's emphasis on a process of dialogue, analysis, and reflexivity, the approach has proven extremely vibrant and open to reassessment and revision. As a consequence, standpoint theory remains an extremely important approach within feminist theory.
The term ruling relations is associated with the feminist thought of Dorothy E. Smith, who came to prominence in the academic movement that arose from women's activism in the 1960s and 1970s. Her work takes up the project of locating lived experiences of oppression within the social contexts that produce those experiences. Ruling relations identifies the institutional complexes (emerging from the development and elaboration of capitalist economies) that coordinate the everyday work of administration and the lives of those subject to administrative regimes.
In Latour’s book Science in Action, readers are encouraged to use science-in-the-making as an entry point for understanding science instead of reinforcing the stable reality of ready made science. Building on his work, this study employs an art-science-in-the-making approach to trace how a new art-science initiative is helped into being. The ethnographic work centers on the development of an interinstitutional dual degree program between two art schools and a university in Rotterdam, the Netherlands. Particular attention is paid to the ways in which mundane, bureaucratic practices feed into the stabilization of the new art-science initiative. Too often, these practices remain outside scholarly discussions on art-science. This article argues that being attentive to the practices of “paper shufflers”, to borrow Latour’s terminology, aids our thinking through encounters across difference. The modus operandi of holding the new intersection together is conceptualized as a mode of syncretism of continuous repair. This modality of being together points to the tendency not to avoid disruptions or threats, but to continuously attend to them anew.
In this chapter, I explore how we can put institutional ethnography (IE) in dialogue with digital sociology to make visible the coordinating role of digital platforms in everyday/night life. My argument focuses on the popular community questions and answers platform for programmers, Stack Overflow. I put forward a case for understanding digital platforms as institutions and I examine the benefits of an IE approach. Rather than analyzing text only as user interaction, I make a case for understanding temporal ordering, programmability, and text-reader conversation within digital platforms. I highlight ways that we can think about text in digital settings and unpack how institutional ethnography can offer insights into digital settings that enrich current methods in digital ethnography.
Few institutional ethnographers have exploited the richness of using historical archival data to explore how ruling relations have changed over time. This essay outlines a conceptual framework and analytical strategies for exploring ruling relations through textually mediated discourse in historical research. I argue that the ontology of the social does not preclude using institutional ethnography to investigate the past. I discuss the two stages of data collection we employed in a joint project on the transformation of the U.S. housing regime during the twentieth century. These stages included the collection of oral housing histories of older women living alone in the Phoenix metropolitan area in the 1990s and the collection of archival materials from the U.S. National Archives and Research Administration, the Library of Congress, historical societies and museums in cities in which the women lived as children and parents. Drawing from this research, I discuss analytical challenges we faced in carrying out our project. Guided often by cultural and social historians, I illustrate various analytical strategies we used to locate text in these women’s talk about housing as a way to open up for us the ruling relations organizing and reorganizing the housing regime during the twentieth century.
We are a student–educator writing collective that have come together outside the formal classroom to experiment with ‘writing differently’, imbued with a desire to enact collective resistance against ‘unnoticed’ and intentionally hidden aspects of the business school curriculum that condone, normalize and reproduce social injustice and inequalities. As students and educator located in the Department of Organizational Psychology at a UK-based business school, we see our non-traditional writing and inquiry through collective writing as a form of resistance against hegemonic scientific norms of knowledge production that dominate our discipline. We evoked Freire’s problem-posing education through a collective enactment of ‘responsibility learning-in-action’ by participating in regular ‘writing as resistance’ sessions, where we wrote around our lived experiences of the ‘unnoticed’ and intentionally hidden curriculum and responsibility learning in the same virtual space and time and then read aloud to one another. Our coming together through this practice (re)claims relationality and solidarity in the student–educator relationship, which is in itself a contribution to the topic of the intersections between responsibility learning and the hidden curriculum at business schools.
Interprofessional collaboration among welfare services is a policy objective promoted to ensure successful service provision to people with complex needs. In the Nordic region, people who are not in education, employment, or training often have challenging life situations requiring help from a multitude of services. In Norway, significant political and institutional efforts focus on implementing policies that support collaboration. However, we know little about how service workers formalize joint efforts. In this study, I used institutional ethnography to explore how interprofessional collaboration was constructed through negotiations of collaborative agreements among leaders of welfare services and how such negotiations are consequential for collaborative practices. I explored two cases of negotiations initiated by the leader of the Norwegian Labor and Welfare Administration. The negotiations were with the local child welfare and protection services and Refugee services, focusing on the transition of care regarding youth and refugees. The data includes two collaborative agreements between the services, an observation of the negotiation of one agreement, and 10 interviews with leaders and staff. Results show that collaboration is constructed based on holistic service provision. The negotiations, however, do not result in such collaborative practices, but are characterized by the demarcation of responsibilities and work.
This article explores the involvement of youth with lived experience (LE) in activism and research aimed at addressing youth homelessness in Canada. Based within a youth‐participatory action research project in Tio'tiá:ke/Montréal, Canada, we reflect on how young people described their own activist organising, as well as the practical ways we may harness actions that homelessness youth are already doing to create communities and solidarity. The authors are members of Youth Action Research Revolution (YARR), a research team primarily made up of youth with LE of homelessness. We position the analysis at an intersection of our own experiences and 63 interviews with youth aged 16–29 conducted by YARR from 2018 to 2021. Conceiving of participatory, youth‐led research as a form of direct action we outline lessons learned from our own research and LE. Young people within our team and participants in YARR's research shared critiques of State systems while outlining the work that they undertook with their peers to act on issues of housing precarity, often eschewing activism aimed at State processes or institutional reform in favour of direct action. This article proposes a mode of fostering youth‐led, socially just change around homelessness—one that shifts conversations from inclusion to solidarity, and recognises the radical potential of research by‐and‐for young people. The authors conclude that research and advocacy on homelessness is always inherently political for young people with LE, and that harnessing the direct action that youth already do to survive is not only a socially just form of mobilising, but can contribute to broader activism towards housing justice.
Inspired by consciousness-raising practices of North American second-wave feminism, Dorothy Smith developed institutional ethnography (IE) as an alternative to established sociology, which she argued objectified people and their experiences. Instead, IE begins from an embodied standpoint to examine how local phenomena are coordinated to happen by ruling relations from afar. In this article, we present methodological insights from our experiences of applying IE, informed by principles of participatory research, in Alberta, Canada to examine the challenges young women (aged 15–21) in larger bodies face while navigating their everyday lives. We begin by exploring current discussions in the burgeoning field of IE, including how IE’s social ontology aligns with participatory approaches to research. Contextualized by our public health backgrounds, we then describe how we used IE to study how the work of growing up in a larger body is socially organized, interpreting work generously as any task requiring thought and intention. Between March-December 2019, we conducted 14 individual interviews and facilitated 5 working group meetings with a subset of interview participants. Discussions during the working group meetings were structured by an adapted critical analysis framework to prompt participants in questioning taken-for-granted assumptions around weight and health. As part of this working group, we developed knowledge mobilization materials (infographics and an open letter) for parents, educators, and healthcare providers about how to navigate weight-related issues with young people, grounded in participants’ experiential knowledge. We specifically reflect on how IE was a valuable tool for addressing four principles of participatory research central to this study: go beyond “do no harm”; provide opportunities for giving feedback; create space for critical engagement; and bring knowledge mobilization to the fore. Overall, our experiences suggest value in IE as a pragmatic, flexible approach to public health research, offering unique methodological tools which keep research participants in view.
Online education made the digital divide visible during the COVID-19 pandemic, based on gender, economic class, locations, and different types of opportunities. Bangladeshi female varsity narratives on gender role stereotypes, economic conditions, household characteristics, family atmosphere, and online teaching strengthen the need for intersectional feminist insights. The study further examines online education potentials and pathways for more online education along intersectional lines. Qualitative methods help gauge how female university students shape their experiences with online education, and emphasize the epistemological importance of voice and women's perspectives for deeper understanding of their experiences. An ‘auto-ethnographic’ approach undergirds the paper’s analysis, elevating reflexive demonstrations and recommendations for more inclusive online education for female university student.
This paper investigates how the reader of prose fiction fills in the blanks regarding a fictional character's membership category, action, and reason for the action. Aligning with an ethnomethodological approach to texts and appropriating membership categorization analysis (MCA), we analyze how the readers of J. D. Salinger, an author whose works are well known for their ambiguity and ambivalence, would grasp the unwritten identities of characters and the meanings of their actions. Our analysis specifies two types of methods deployed for the reader to understand the fictional texts. First, in an at-a-glance way, the reader can supply the missing categories and sequence of actions by turning to the commonsense knowledge and social norms regarding the association between the category and the activity. Second, the reader can construct various interpretations regarding the recognizably ambiguous scenes of the text by turning to the conceptual knowledge of the relevant social phenomena , the maxims specific to the act of storytelling, and the writer's techniques peculiar to the fictional texts. The findings demonstrate the vast applicability of an MCA approach to the analysis of the work of reading prose fiction and shed light on the detailed operations of the author's maxims and techniques in the textual configuration of prose fiction, thereby indicating the possibility of ethnomethodological analysis including the interwoven consideration of the reader's activity and the tex-tual organization.
Underpinned by neoliberal rationalities, the contractual relationship between government funders and immigrant-serving organisations (ISOs) has led these agencies to promote neoliberal values of competition in the business market, prioritising quantity over quality in their services in order to secure government funding. Informed by Foucault's concept of governmentality as its theoretical framework and institutional ethnography (IE) as its methodology, our study investigates the work experiences of 18 immigrant settlement workers (ISWs) at three ISOs in western Canada. This study identifies how following an outcomes-driven evaluation approach, as required by the federal government, produces a series of textually mediated accountabilities, constructing translocal textual social relations that further coordinate and govern ISWs’ conduct in their local ISO workplaces. This evaluation approach, as analyzed in our study, is exercised as the technologies of ruling power, which is strengthened by the ruling of systems, workplace knowledge, social relations, and the governed-self, producing ideal ISWs who are self-accountable, self-regulated, adaptable, and productive. This process of making ideal ISWs legitimises ISWs’ apparatus role in reinforcing technologies of ruling power from the individual, organisational and institutional perspectives to better serve the agenda of the state.
In animal sheltering and protection, One Welfare initiatives include supporting people who have difficulty providing for their animals because of limitations in their physical or mental health, income or housing. However, little research has focused on the actual work that such initiatives involve for animal shelter staff and animal protection officers. We used institutional ethnography to explore how such work activities occur in frontline practices and to better understand how this work is coordinated. Methods included ethnographic observation of animal protection officers and animal shelter staff, document analysis, plus focus groups and interviews with staff, officers and managers. In cases where an animal’s care was deficient but did not meet the standard for legal intervention, officers provided people with supplies for their animals, referred them to low-cost or free veterinary care, and provided emergency animal boarding. This work was time-consuming and was sometimes done repeatedly without lasting effect. It was often constrained by animal owners’ limited housing, cognitive decline, mental health and other factors. Hence, improving the animal’s welfare in these ways was often difficult and uncertain. Although officers and animal shelter staff are increasingly expected to provide and record supports given to vulnerable owners, standard procedures and criteria for intervention have not yet evolved; hence the work is largely left to the judgement and ingenuity of personnel. In addition, the necessary collaboration between animal welfare workers and human social services staff (e.g. social workers, supportive-housing staff) is made difficult by the different expectations and different institutional processes governing such activities. Further work is needed to assess how meeting the needs of both animals and people could be strengthened in challenging situations. This might include sharing best practices among officers and further ethnographic analysis of animal protection services, how they interact with other services, and how One Welfare initiatives actually affect animal care. Institutional ethnography provides a way to study the organisational processes that shape and constrain care for animals, and its explicit focus on actual work processes provides insights that may be missed by other approaches.
“Doing Gender,” Candance West and Don Zimmerman’s famous 1987 article, has become a folk concept—a trope or commonsense resource within the sociology of gender. Yet at the same time, most gender scholars overlook its ethnomethodological premise, visible in both poststructuralist misunderstandings of its argument outside the discipline of sociology and what I term a realist misunderstanding of it in the study of structures and identities within the discipline. Reading West and Zimmerman queerly while clarifying ethnomethodology’s ontology, I refocus attention for critical scholarship on ethnomethodology’s analytic sensibilities for research on gender, race, and sexuality, among other embodiments. Specifically, ethnomethodology reframes a vision of actors as relational, practical actors; repositions gender as accountable, jointly produced social relations, not individual identity; and foregrounds resistance in addition to conformity. Hence, my gender (race/class/sexuality) is not mine; it is ours. Ethnomethodology’s ontological shift in temporality to reality-in-production enables interpretive-materialism: a queer, anti-racist, intersectional sociology that is future-facing and in motion.
Over the past few decades new ways of conceiving the relation between people, practices and institutions have been developed, enabling an understanding of human conduct in complex situations that is distinctive from traditional psychological and sociological conceptions. This distinctiveness is derived from a sophisticated analytic approach to social action which combines conversation analysis with the fresh treatment of epistemology, mind, cognition and personality developed in discursive psychology. This text is the first to showcase and promote this new method of discursive research in practice. Featuring contributions from a range of international academics, both pioneers in the field and exciting new researchers, this book illustrates an approach to social science issues that cuts across the traditional disciplinary divisions to provide a rich participant-based understanding of action.
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